Can you read and interpret literature "correctly"? Or is reading a novel, a poem or a play a thoroughly subjective experience? In his foray through 800 years of German and European literary history, the Germanist Hermann Kurzke shows that both are true. He conveys both the tools and the enthusiasm with which one can encounter great literary works.Schiller's "Wallenstein", Fontane's "Effi Briest", Musil's "Mann ohne Eigenschaften", are neither bulky nor old-fashioned -- if you can read them.